Beyond the walls: Château of Tours
29 September to 10 November 2012

At the Château de Tours Per Barclay presents the photographic work based on his largest Room of Oil.  This temporary installation on an exceptional scale was created out in 2011 in Boulogne-Billancourt with the collaboration of  CCC providing the artistic direction of this project on a huge scale, doing so via its Artists’ Agency.
The Rooms of Oil are installations which are destined solely to be photographed. Within the most varied of architectural constructions (be it a baroque palace, bunker, safe vault, art gallery or fisherman’s hut), in the enclosed spaces the artist covers the floor with black oil.  Thus these “liquid floors” become unsettling reflective surfaces which reflect the image of the setting and open up a dizzying impression of depth. Per Barclay tilts spatial and sensory landmarks. In 2011, within the former headquarters of the Thompson company in Boulogne-Billancourt*, which at the time was being refurbished, he created his largest Room of Oil. Taking up 1500 m2 of the building’s former atrium, this spectacular installation doubled in the most dizzying way the enormous volume of this vaulted building scheduled for demolition, and recorded a memory of it.

This installation was the basis for creating a series of photographs shown at the Château of Tours. This series was to set up a dialogue with the single photograph originating from another Room of Oil made at the CCC in 2008 within a small white square room inside the exhibition space.

CHÂTEAU DE TOURS
Open Tuesday to Friday 2pm to 6pm and on weekends from 2.15 pm to 6pm.
Château of Tours – 25 Avenue André Malraux
www.tours.fr